The Internal Drive to Thrive
This series of blogs is taken from articles by Charles Debelak in the Birchwood School of Hawken's Clipboard during the 2013-14 school year. The purpose of Mr. Debelak's Clipboard articles is to provide parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and Mr. Debelak's 40+ years educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents.
We should keep three things in mind when teaching our children how to thrive. First, we acknowledge that our children have an innate drive to grow and develop. By nature, they want to thrive, to blossom, to flourish, to become what they can become.
Second, while understanding their internal aspirations, we also acknowledge that children dislike and often resist the process of learning how to thrive. That’s because they also possess an inclination that hopes to avoid notions of self-control, hard work, self-discipline, and any other expectations necessary to build enduring habits and attitudes that lead to thriving.
Third, we accept that parents are the bridge connecting the innate potential to flourish with fulfillment. Parents construct a loving yet disciplined environment that nurtures potential until it becomes actual. As the bridge builders, parents assume the responsibility and make the sacrifices that create the connection. Consequently, parents walk the fine line between love and regimen, between compassion and firmness, between accepting children just as they are while expecting, and even demanding, the best they can be. This is a tough job requiring indomitable dedication, perseverance, and unrelenting love.
Perhaps we should identify the fourth realization. That is one of vision. Without vision, that is, without unequivocal commitment to see children become thriving young people capable of meeting the challenges and opportunities of life, no parent will willingly accept the demands placed on their shoulders to make this happen. It is the toughest job a parent will face.
In his book How Children Succeed, Paul Tough draws upon extensive research from the fields of child psychology and human development to describe this “fine line” as it applies to his own parenting efforts with his son Ellington: “... (parenting) involves a lot of comforting and hugging and talking and reassuring. And my wife, Paula, and I both did a lot of that when Ellington was little ... doing those things with Ellington in his infancy will turn out to have made a bigger difference in his character, and in his ultimate happiness and success, than anything else we do. As Ellington grew older, though, I found, as countless parents had found before me, that he needed something more than love and hugs. He also needed discipline, rules, limits; someone to say no. And what he needed more than anything was some child-size adversity, a chance to fall down and get back up on his own, without help. This was harder for Paula and me – it came less naturally to us than the hugging and comforting – and I know that it is just the beginning of a long struggle we will face, as all parents do, between our urge to provide everything for our child, to protect him from all harm, and our knowledge that if we really want him to succeed, we need to first let him fail” (pp 182-183).
Substituting the word thrive for success, we readily see the parallels. In order for children to learn how to thrive, or in Tough’s words “succeed,” they will need parents who themselves are in a deep and profound learning process. How does a parent express unrelenting love while also being a disciplinarian? How does a parent envelop their child with tenderness and warmth while remaining uncompromising on standards of personal and social behaviors? How does a parent show kindness while also expecting hard work and self-control? How does a parent empathize with failure and disappointment while insisting that the child get back up and try again? How does a parent accept a child’s performance in school while simultaneously asking for more? How does a parent sympathize with a child’s fear of new environments and new situations, yet insist that the child try nonetheless? When children are faced with difficult situations and they begin to whine, complain and blame, how does the parent show empathy while turning the situation around and make the child confront hard situations?
Parents who want to see their children grow up as thriving young adults have to ask these questions. To nurture thriving children is the most difficult job in the world! It requires time, commitment and energy. It requires parents to show love even when they are angry. It requires parents to know why they must be gentle and kind and when they must be an unrelenting disciplinarian. In other words, parents will need to subjugate their own likes and dislikes to a higher view of what is best for their children.
An independent, coeducational, college preparatory day school, toddler through grade 12
Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135
Upper School, PO Box 8002 (12465 County Line Rd), Gates Mills, OH 44040
Mastery School of Hawken, 11025 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Gries Center, 10823 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Early Childhood, Lower, and Middle Schools, 5000 Clubside Rd, Lyndhurst, OH 44124
Birchwood School of Hawken, 4400 West 140th Street, Cleveland, OH 44135
Upper School, PO Box 8002 (12465 County Line Rd), Gates Mills, OH 44040
Mastery School of Hawken, 11025 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
Gries Center, 10823 Magnolia Dr, Cleveland, OH 44106
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